Chapter 380: What the Director Asked
Day 27 opened the way the last few had — grey sky, quiet camp, Kai's pool already close to its ceiling before he was fully awake. Ninety-five percent. He noted it and let it go.
Nobody needed to say what today was for. The record-keeper boy had a fresh page ruled before breakfast, three columns waiting, nothing written in any of them yet.
Mira found him at the fire before the others stirred, two cups in her hands instead of one. She set the second down beside him without a word and sat close, the distance between them the kind that had stopped needing a reason.
"You didn't sleep either," she said.
"I slept. I kept thinking in the gaps." He wrapped both hands around the cup, not drinking yet. "Cole's question and the Board's question aren't the same question. I keep answering the wrong one in my head."
"Then answer the right one on paper instead," she said. "You have all day."
